


you're like a mirror reflecting me

by melessatarlys



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Downton Abbey Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-06 04:49:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12809976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melessatarlys/pseuds/melessatarlys
Summary: Sansa holds her head high and thinks of Robb and Bran and Rickon and all that should have been, of Winterfell and her son and all that is.“Shall we begin, gentlemen?”(or, the downton abbey au)





	1. spring, 1920

**Author's Note:**

> i've talked about this on tumblr and at long last here it is.
> 
> title from dust to dust by the civil wars.

_Spring, 1920_

 

She is so tired of black.

 

Sansa can barely remember a year when she hasn’t worn mourning - for Robb, for Harry, for Jeyne and Bran and Rickon. Already she has worn enough mourning for a lifetime, has cried enough tears for ten lifetimes. Perhaps that is why she did not cry when they heard of Robb’s accident. Her mother had been near inconsolable, her father stoic and haunted in his grief. Even Arya had cried, but to Sansa it had seemed as though she’d had no more tears to shed.

 

Through the funeral and the burial and the months spent closed up in Winterfell she had not cried. It is only now, when the first warmth of spring is starting to linger that she cries, on her knees in the church graveyard in front of a stone that bears her brother’s name. The other names are there as well - Bran and Rickon, whose bodies they’ll never find, and Harry, buried hastily somewhere in France without ever knowing he would have a son. Jeyne is there too, sweet and sensitive Jeyne who had loved Robb enough to marry him when it was uncertain if he’d ever have children, when it was unsure if he’d ever walk again.

 

But Sansa has cried enough for them, and her tears are for Robb now – for Robb and all that he left behind. For surely, she thinks, it must be easier to leave than to be left. Robb’s pain was over in an instant, the doctor had assured them, and in that moment Sansa could have found it in herself to be envious of him, for her pain had felt never ending. But the sharp, jagged wound that had burned white hot at first has scabbed over now, and it is only a steady ache in her chest that she sometimes can sometimes ignore enough to forget that it hurts.

 

Her tears run their course, and when they are done Sansa suddenly feels she cannot stay any longer, cannot return to Winterfell fast enough to get out of her black coat and black hat until the only black she wears is her dress. It is early enough in the day that her mother may yet still be in bed, and though her father and Arya are likely up, she’s confident she can avoid them until at least the afternoon. But when she rises from the damp ground and turns around, she finds she isn’t alone.

 

“Jon.” Her voice is hollow from disuse, enough that even her surprise doesn’t seem to register. He too is buttoned up in a warm coat – for all that the weather is changing it is still cool and damp in the mornings. He is dressed for walking, for crossing the estate in the morning as she has seen him do from her window.

 

“I thought I could walk you back to the house,” he says, and she feels a rush of gratitude for him, the only one who will treat her like she is not made of glass. She had not seen Jon cry either, when Robb died, and though Sansa had shut herself away she thinks that perhaps it was Jon who had kept the others away from her. Jon, who had been Robb’s best friend and agent, who had seconded all of Robb’s hopeful plans for the future of Winterfell. Jon, who had lost as much as any of them.

 

“Of course.” She doesn’t want to – she wants only to be alone – but she cannot say that. _Courtesy is a lady’s armor,_ she thinks, and she is nothing if not a lady. Even now, after burying three brothers and a husband, she is ever-mindful of her courtesies.

 

His smile is relieved when she takes his arm, and she is grateful he does not comment on her tears.

 

The walk back is quiet. Jon, for as long as Sansa has known him, has never been one for idle talk. He isn’t afraid of speaking his mind, she knows well enough, but nor is he one for beginning a conversation that has no purpose. That had certainly annoyed her when they had first met, and the gods knew they hadn’t been the fastest of friends. But love of Robb and of Winterfell had done their work, and when Harry had died Jon had been the only one who hadn’t looked at her with pity.

 

“Some of the tenant farmers are having luncheon with your father today,” Jon says without looking at her as they round the path and the house comes into view. Sansa’s hand tightens on his arm. So this is why he stopped at the church.

 

“You think I should go.” Her tone is clipped, perhaps harsher than it should be.

 

“I think it would do you good to get involved in the running of the estate again,” he replies, just as easy as before, as though he hadn’t heard the warning in her voice. Still he doesn’t look at her, not until she stops on the path and pulls her arm from his.

 

“Do me good?” He sighs, and she thinks she knows where this is going, what he’s going to say, but she hadn’t thought it of him, hadn’t thought that _Jon_ of all people would reproach her for it.

 

“We all miss him, Sansa,” he says softly, gently, and suddenly she is glass for him, too. Jon, who had never treated her as something breakable. “We all miss him, but you can’t stay closed up like this. You can’t avoid everyone and everything forever.”

 

She wants to scream at him in that moment, wants to cry and yell and make him understand that of course she doesn’t _want_ to be this way. All she wants is her brothers back. All she wants is Robb and Bran and Rickon and Jeyne and even Harry who had been near a stranger to her in truth for all that they were married. She wants to make him understand how she near despises herself for the way it is so _hard_ to be around the others, for the way Arya is so much more distant and cold now or the way her mother floats about the house like a ghost. It is hard enough to be with those who also loved Robb, and so the idea of taking the position that was to be Robb’s, even for her son’s sake, fills her with dread.

 

“I can. Perhaps you don’t understand it, but my grief is my own.” Sansa draws herself up, straightens her spine and she will _not_ be weak now. “And I’ll thank you not to tell me what I cannot or should not do.” If she thinks to reprimand him she is disappointed, for he only softens his gaze even more as he sighs.

 

(That had only grated her nerves further when he had first come to Winterfell, his constant sighs.)

 

“Your son is your father’s heir, Sansa. For Eddard’s sake, if not for your own, I think you should go. Or should we leave Robb’s plans in the dust? They were as much your plans as his, you know.” Jon makes as though to put a hand on her arm but thinks better of it. Still, she pulls away, and doesn’t miss the flash of hurt in his eyes.

 

“You are the agent. I trust you can see them through. Good day, Jon.” They are too far from the house, so she cannot disappear as quickly as she would wish to, but he lets her walk away, does not try to call her back. She does not turn around, does not give him a second glance, but she can imagine him there in the middle of the path, watching her with that sad, serious gaze he always has.

 

Something that feels suspiciously like guilt twists in her gut, but she ignores it.

 

* * *

 

 

By noon, the thin tendril of guilt that she had felt hours ago has only grown until it sits uneasily in her chest, weighing heavy on her. Jon had only been trying to help, and she had pushed him away. _Like you push everyone away_. But he had looked at her with pity in his eyes, and hadn’t that been it, really? The way he had looked at her like she might shatter, as though he were afraid of breaking her?

 

 _I will not break_. Sansa looks down at Eddard, sprawled in her lap as he builds towers out of blocks and knocks them down again. With his reddish curls and river-blue eyes he looks so much like her brothers that it aches, sometimes, and if she squints it could be Bran or Rickon playing in the nursery they had all shared as children.

 

“You will be Lord of Winterfell one day,” She whispers into his hair before he squirms away without a backward glance to resume his play. She lets her hands fall to the black fabric of her dress.

 

Sansa thinks of her father, more honorable and honest than was probably good for him, and of Robb, dutiful to a fault and no less devoted to Winterfell and its people. _You will be like them, Eddard_ , she thinks, forcing it past the low ache in her chest that always comes with thoughts of Robb.

 

_You will be Lord of Winterfell one day, and I will be there to help you._

 

Sansa leans over to press a kiss into her son’s hair, earning a giggle and a sunshine-bright smile in return, and she cannot stop the way her lips fight to curve up at the corners in response.

 

* * *

 

 

 _They were your plans as much as his, you know_.

 

It is Jon’s voice that echoes in Sansa’s head as Gilly fixes her hair, as she watches her reflection in the mirror. The war aged all of them, and at times she feels a thousand years old, for all that she has only seen two dozen name days.

 

 _They were your plans as much as his_.

 

She thinks of Robb – proud, outspoken, dutiful Robb who had _listened_ when she had ideas and had truly wanted to hear what she had to say. Robb, who had confessed to her after Jeyne’s funeral that he would never marry, that it didn’t matter if the doctors were certain he could father children because he never would. Robb, who had loved her son as much as Sansa did and who had sworn to her that little Eddard would be his heir.

_Should we leave Robb’s plans in the dust?_

 

Luncheon is just ready to begin when she enters, and had she not spent the entire walk down the stairs steeling herself it might have bothered her, the way that all the men at the table turn their faces to her, curious and waiting. But as the door closes behind her, all she can see is Jon and his smile and  his eyes that have no trace of pity in them. All she can see is her father, so full of worry and honor and _pride_.

 

Sansa holds her head high and thinks of Robb and Bran and Rickon and all that should have been, of Winterfell and her son and all that _is_.

 

“Shall we begin, gentlemen?”

 

* * *

 

 

Jon finds her later in the nursery.

 

Sansa sits on the floor, dress crinkled around her knees, watching her son. Eddard has only just woken from his nap and is all smiles and laughter in the way that only a two-year-old can be, once more busy at his tower of blocks. She tries, sometimes, to find anything of Harry in her son, but all she can see is her own brothers – auburn curls and blue eyes and a smile that could light the world.

  
“Brandon Norrey and Hugo Wull were very impressed,” Jon begins, hovering in the doorframe. Sansa cannot recall ever seeing him in the nursery before. “The others, too, but they made a point to mention it. Said you reminded them of Lady Stark.”

 

 _You reminded them of Lady Stark_. Her mother is a force to be reckoned with, to be sure, but the only image that comes to mind is the pale, haunted woman that now walks the corridors of Winterfell. As though he knows where her thoughts go, Jon comes to join her on the floor.

 

“You’re _good_ at this Sansa, at running the estate. I know you don’t - ” He pauses, and when Sansa turns her eyes to him she sees that he, too, is watching Eddard as though he’s seeing someone else. “I know you don’t want to take Robb’s place. I don’t either, but…” He trails off with a slight shake of his head.

 

Softly, hesitantly, Sansa reaches out to lay a hand over his.

 

“You’re good at this, too. Robb and Father asked you to be the agent for a reason, Jon, and not just because you’re family.” Though Jon’s gaze stays on little Eddard, Sansa can see the way his lips quirk up at the sides into the smallest of smiles.

 

“I go walking in the mornings,” he says casually, as though commenting on the weather. Sansa knows this, has seen him leaving the house in the early morning when she cannot sleep and returning while Gilly helps her dress. She can feel the point he is getting to, though, and so she says nothing.

 

“Perhaps you could join me. Get to know some of the farmers, see some of the changes we’re making.” He does not look at her, only reaches out to move a block closer into Eddard’s reach.

 

It isn’t a question, but it hangs in the air between them, and Sansa thinks that perhaps this is the real test. She had joined them at luncheon, had broken her self-inflicted confinement, but if she backed away now he wouldn’t press her. If she left the running and the future of Winterfell in his hands, in her father’s hands, they would do it admirably, would ensure that her son would inherit an estate that was prospering and that the people were taken care of.

 

She could leave it all to them, but she won’t. _I’ll join you_ , she wants to say. _I’ll join you, and we’ll make the Winterfell that Robb dreamed of, that Eddard will inherit, and we’ll do it together_.

 

“I’ll make sure to have Gilly set out my warm coat,” she says instead. He looks at her then, with a smile in his eyes, and she knows he understands.


	2. summer, 1920

_Summer, 1920_

 

“I’ll order some more, my lady.”

 

Sansa stares down at her shoes with the soles peeling away from the leather, the third ruined pair in as many months. The heaviest spring rains have come and gone, but still she returns each morning with mud on her shoes and the hem of her dress, hair mussed from the wind. She’s never more alive than during those moments, when she and Jon return to the house just as the rest of the family is waking.

 

It had been Jon’s idea – a way for him to show her the needs of the estate and to meet some of the farmers on more casual terms. She has Winterfell in her bones, but still Sansa finds that she learns something new about her home with every hill they climb, with every field they cross or stream they step through. Today they had spent longer than usual, discussing the state of the pigs with one of the tenant farmers, and she and Jon had rushed back so as not to miss breakfast.

 

“Thank you, Gilly. Perhaps a slightly darker color next time, so as not to show the mud as much.” Gilly nods and hurries off, and Sansa follows her out the door.

 

When she arrives in the dining room the others are already there. Her father reads the paper while Jon and Arya bicker and laugh over some tale Arya is telling. They seem not to notice her until she goes to take her seat by her father, who says nothing but tilts his head just so to allow her a kiss on his cheek. Jon gives her a smile across the table.

 

“I see we both cleaned up well after this morning,” he says with a chuckle, and Sansa answers it with a smile of her own, quick and easy in a way she had thought impossible only a few months ago. Arya watches them from across the table as she bites into a piece of toast, grey eyes observant and intense as ever.

 

“I don’t know what you two can possibly be doing out there _every_ morning. All you do is walk – though I can’t imagine how you possible got Sansa to even come close to getting mud on herself,” Arya says, a slight edge to her voice that Sansa is all too familiar with.

 

“You’re welcome to join us if you wish,” she says lightly, buttering her toast and very purposefully not looking at her sister. Things have eased between them since they came out of mourning, but still she can’t be sure that they’ll ever be close. There is too much distance, too many differences between them. But perhaps someday, she thinks. _Perhaps there is that hope_.

 

Arya does join them the next day, rubbing sleep from her eyes and frowning, and Sansa feels that spark of hope flicker in her chest as they walk, the three of them, over hills and through fields. Jory Cassel is tending his sheep when they pass and calls out to them, and it is such a _beautiful_ day, Sansa thinks, with the sun shining and Jon and Arya beside her as the fog hovers between the hills and the birds sing in the trees.

 

There had been a time – after Robb died, after Bran and Rickon and Jeyne and Harry – when she had thought she would never be happy again, when joy had seemed an impossible thing that she would never touch again. Now, though, with the form of Winterfell in the distance against the hills, it seems so tangible, as though it dangles in front of her and all she need do is reach out and take it.

 

“Do you remember when we used to come up here as children?” Arya’s voice startles her, so lost in her thoughts as she was. A thousand memories flash through her mind – Father carrying Bran or Rickon on his shoulders, Robb leading them all on the big sled down a snow-covered hill, Bran and Arya wrestling playfully before Mother caught them. Sansa closes her eyes.

 

“You and Robb would always try to trick Maester Luwin into holding lessons outside,” she says with a smile. They had all been so happy then, she thinks, before Robb went off to school, before Bran and Rickon left to visit Grandfather Hoster in America and never returned, before the war and Harry and Jeyne and _Robb_. There’s a burning behind her eyes that she tries to ignore, but she can feel the tears building anyway.

 

A hand slips into hers, and when she opens her eyes it is not her sister but Jon. Jon, with his soft smile and worried eyes and callused hands. Jon, who hadn’t been there when they were children but who was here _now_ , looking for all the world as though he knew exactly the memories that brought tears to her eyes.

 

She has tried so hard to be strong, for her parents and her sister and her son. For Bran and Rickon, who had been too young, for Robb, who had _dreamed_. And it hits her here, on the hill overlooking the Cassels’ pasture, with mud on her boots and the breeze in her hair. With Arya’s arm around her and Jon’s hand in hers, they stand there as the sun rises over the outline of Winterfell.

 

 _I will not break_ , she had thought all those months ago, whispering it into Eddard’s hair like she was swearing an oath. And she hasn’t, won’t – but maybe, Sansa thinks, they would help her pick up the pieces if she did.

 

* * *

 

 

“You spend a lot of time with Jon these days.”

 

It isn’t a question, not the way her mother says it that night as they sit in the drawing room after dinner. Arya has left for London and so it is just the two of them while the men – tonight only her father, Jon, and Lord Glover - linger in the dining room.

 

Sansa knows that Jon’s arrival at Winterfell, that Jon’s very _existence_ was a threat in her mother’s eyes – if not to the lordship (for the entail must be good for something) then at least to their reputations. Catelyn Stark had worried, when her husband’s illegitimate nephew had shown up on their doorstep, that the scandal of it all would put an end to any marriage prospects for her own children.

  
It hardly seems to matter now, Sansa thinks, when she and Arya are the only ones left, when she was wedded and widowed before her twenty-third name day and Arya has shown no desire for marriage at all. Still, it rankles that her mother cannot seem to look past those circumstances that were out of Jon’s control.

 

 _He understands_ , she wants to say. _He listens to what I say and he understands and doesn’t judge me for it_.

 

“He is the agent,” she says instead as though that might explain it – a full truth that still sounds like a lie, like she is holding something back. They spend nearly every afternoon together with Father, looking over the books and the plans and so many things, all of which the agent is _supposed_ to do. But they also walk each morning, those quiet hours that Sansa has come to cherish. Still, calling him cousin doesn’t sound quite right, not when they were so distant growing up, nor does friend seem to cover it. “He’s Jon.”

 

Her mother only sighs, a long, shuddering sound that has become too familiar since they all put away their mourning clothes.

 

“Are you happy, Sansa?” Before she can think too much on it, Catelyn continues. “It’s only that sometimes I think - ” She pauses. “Eddard is nearly two, now. There would be nothing amiss, should you wish to wed again.”

 

Sansa feels herself blink in surprise. She had thought of it, of course – the idea of another body to keep her bed warm and of brothers and sisters for her son. When they had first stopped wearing black, when she and Jon were just beginning to figure out the strange partnership between them, the thought had crossed her mind. But after all that has happened she had found that she had little desire to see London again, to ever travel south again, and there were so few eligible men left near Winterfell that she could see herself growing old with.

 

“I am - ” she starts to say, but can’t quite finish. _Happy_ seems the wrong word even now, but she’s not sure what else to use. “I’m content here, Mother,” she says finally, and hopes that her mother understands.

 

She _is_ content, in a way, doing the work she and Robb and Jon had dreamed of, spending hours with her father over plans and ledgers. It’s not the kind of life she had dreamed of as a girl, but so much about her life is nothing like she had wanted that it hardly seems to matter.

 

Catelyn says nothing, only sighs again, but she holds Sansa’s hand tight between her own, and the silence that follows is not an uncomfortable one.

 

* * *

 

Sansa thinks that’s the end of it.

 

From the outside, she knows, it must look rather odd. She and Jon had never been close, not even before Robb died when the three of them had been planning and dreaming together for the future of Winterfell. For the two of them to be together more often than not, without Robb in between to bridge the awkwardness or smooth over frustrations – well, it must certainly seem rather strange.

 

Her father has said nothing, but Sansa can see the way he watches them, as though trying to figure them out. They bend over ledgers in the library, she and Jon, with their heads close together, and she can feel her father’s eyes on them, but she won’t be the one to bring it up.

 

Partly, she suspects, it’s because she has no answer to that unspoken question. She and Jon have much in common, or so they’ve discovered in the past months, and Sansa feels comfortable with him in a way she can’t ever remember feeling before. And it feels like it must be obvious – she can feel herself smiling more, even spares one for Arya when she complains yet again about the mechanic in the village and his refusal to let her help around the shop.

 

“ _My lady_ , he calls me, as though I haven’t told him a thousand times to call me by my name,” she mutters in frustration over breakfast, stabbing at her eggs with more force than is probably necessary. Sansa feels her lips fighting to curve up at the corners and forces herself not to smile, though she can’t help but notice Jon’s failure to hid his own smile when she catches across the table.

 

“He’s only being polite, Arya,” she says evenly, buttering her toast. “The poor fellow is probably petrified that he’ll get a stern rebuke from Father if it gets out that the younger daughter of the Lord of Winterfell is playing mechanic in the village.” Arya glares at her from across the table, but Ned doesn’t bother to glance up from his paper.

 

“I’d do nothing of the sort. Gendry Waters is a fine mechanic – I’ve been considering asking him to work for the estate in a few years when Mikken gets too old to continue.” With his eyes still glued to the news, Sansa knows that her father misses the way Arya’s cheeks redden and how she nearly chokes on her coffee. Sansa doesn’t though, and has to turn her face to hide her smile.

 

She doesn’t smile later, though, when her sister grabs her by the arm as she rounds the corner at the top of the stairs and pulls her none too gently into the little windowed alcove overlooking the garden.

 

“What are you doing, Arya?” Arya only rolls her eyes.

  
“What are _you_ doing? At first I thought, you know, maybe he was helping you because he’s the agent and he _does_ things like that. But it’s been months and you’re still spending all your time with him and – and you don’t even _like_ him!”

 

Arya looks so truly confused, as though she cannot fathom that Sansa would freely choose to spend so much time with Jon, and – well. Sansa can’t quite blame her, not after years of awkward silences and self-imposed distance between them. But Jon is _Jon_ , and Sansa had been so foolish, and perhaps that is why she pulls her arm from Arya’s grasp and sinks onto the window seat while avoiding her sister’s gaze. Her hands twist in her lap and this is so much more uncomfortable than it had been with her mother.

 

“I was a fool, Arya,” she says quietly, though still she doesn’t dare glance up to see the look on her sister’s face. “I was snobbish and entitled and so much worse, I know, but-“

 

“Sansa-” Arya starts, but Sansa only waves her hand slightly.

 

“Jon is a good man, Arya, and I was foolish not to see it before. And I know that – I know you’ve always been close and I don’t want to take that from you, if that’s what you’re worrying about. But Jon and I – he understands, about the estate and about Robb and everything. And just because we weren’t close before doesn’t mean we can’t be so now.”

 

It might be the longest description she’s ever spoken of her relationship with Jon, and it feels like something has opened in her chest because of it. Not a weight lifted, necessarily, but a window opened, so that daylight and fresh air can get inside – as though that secret (if it ever was a secret) isn’t locked inside her any longer but out in the open for all to see. Finally she dares to look at Arya, expecting confusion or anger or any number of other emotions, for all that the walls between them have begun to crumble. But instead she finds her sister biting back a smile.

 

“Took you long enough, didn’t it?” She says with a roll of her eyes, in the kind of exasperated tone that Sansa knows she used all too often when they were younger.

 

And then, suddenly, neither of them can hold back their laughter any longer, until Sansa’s sides ache from it. It is a good ache, the kind she gets after chasing Eddard around the garden, or when she and Robb and Arya and Bran had raced each other across the field on horseback with the wind in their hair and the sun in their eyes – breathless and sore, but _happy_.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on [tumblr](http://melessatarlys.tumblr.com)!


End file.
